
Class^,£l-\5fe-8 
Book.£L(o..ML__ 

GDFWIGHT DEPOSm 



The Armenian Version 

of 

MARK: 

a Sonnet. 



Together With 

Fairmount Park and Other Poems 



PHILADELPHIA: 
Ideal Press 3341 Lancaster Avenue 

1920 



The Armenian Version 

of X'i^ 

MARK: 

a Sonnet. 



Together With 

Fairmount Park and Other Poems 



PHILADELPHIA: 
Ideal Press 3341 Lancaster Avenue 

1920 






pa 







COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY ALBERT J. EDMUNDS. 



OEC 17 1920 ©CU605367 



DEDICATED 
to 

MY FRIEND 
JACQUELINE HARRISON SMITH 



ARMENIAN MANUSCRIPTS 

AND THE 

MARK APPENDIX: 

A STUDY IN NATIONAL TENACITY. 

(BEING THE KEY TO THE SONNET.) 

(See "Mark" XVI, 9-20 in the American Standard Version, Gran- 
ville Penn's, James Moffatt's and the Twentieth Century New 
Testaments.) 



OMIT 


PROTEST 


INSERT 


A. D. 887 
About 900 


QQQ ("Presbyter 
^0<^ Ariston's") 


(Latin, Greek and Sy- 
riac MSS. are inserting 
since the fifth century.) 


1098 


(in smaller letters 
*1116 after the 
red colophon) 




About 1166 


^ 




1207 




*1181 


1281 


*1282 


*1280 


1295 




About 1300 


1317 




1541 


1321 




1582 


1436 




Century XV 


About 1450 




Century XVI 




1484 


About 1600 




About 1600 


icn7 



This mute story is almost as tragic as the massacres. Surrounded 
by powerful and unscrupulous Churches, the Armenians refused 
for a thousand years to corrupt the Holy Gospel, 



*Cilician and Romanized MSS. 



Lower Criticism: Manuscripts, Versions and Fathers. 



THE ARMENIAN VERSION OF MARK. 

The Lord appeared to Peter. So saith Paul, 

And Luke, in one perfunctory line, the same. 
Where was the glorious story? Mark had all 

Before 'twas torn or died in Nero's flame. 
Then came the rival, Mary Magdalene, 

In John's Ephesian rhapsody sublime. 
And crowned by him the Church's Easter queen. 

But Christ appeared to Peter. Place and time 
And lofty words then uttered, all are lost. ( 1 ) 

A later pen dragged Mary into ''Mark," (2) 
And Syria, Greece and Rome the tale embost 

Upon the Holy Gospel. All was dark 
Except ARMENIA'S mountain nakedness, 
That kept the torso Mark thru storm and stress. 

Cheltenham, Pennsylvania: May, 1920. 



(1) Except, perhaps, the charge to Peter, mis- 
placed in Matthew xvi. It was pointed out in Buddhist 
and Christian Gospels (Tokyo, 1905) that this oracle 
was post-resurrection. Bacon, of Yale, repeated the 
suggestion in 1909, in the Harvard Theological Review. 

(2) The quotation marks signify the spurious ap- 
pendix (xvi: 9-20). 



HANDEL'S MESSIAH 

After an Evening with Children. 

Messiah music, with the dual drums 

And Handel's organ thunder, shook the hall. 

The Christian Lamb beside the Godhead throned 

In Oriental splendor — Hebrew wealth 

And Persian might and title, KING OF KINGS- 

Reigned like a Hindu silence over all. 

And yet by every glory unsubdued, 

I meditated on my trinity — 

The lovely Mary, wondrous little Bet, 

And now this supernatural speechless Jean 

Who looks unfathomable mysteries 

And messages from God. 

The nations rage, 
Until the Hallelujah Chorus booms 
And harmonizes all : we hear the shout 
Of peoples unto peoples from afar 
And from the deeps of time, from brutal pasts 
Backward and backward to the primal apes 
And crocodiles of hell. Demiurge ! 
With all thy crimes prodigious, I forgive 
E'en thee when I behold the eyes of Jean, 
And think that in some hundred million years 
Thine empire of the Beast of wickedness 
Will be an unrecorded nightmare, gone 
Forever and forever, while the Lamb 
Only begins his vast eternity. 

1914. 



THE READER. 

I entertained the kings of creed and thought ; 

The Buddha was my guest; for many a year 
Of youth and midlife his disciples brought 

Their Lord before me. Socrates was here, 
And One, half saint, half myth, from Palestine. 

From Stockholm and from Konigsberg there came 
The founders of a new dynastic line, 

Antagonists at first, at last the same. 
Then scholars moved across my mental stage, 

Uniting tongues and peoples, while the fire 
Of poets, beaconing a newborn age. 

Made all things equal in a vast desire. 
Where is the pageant now? My heart is cold. 
And gone forever are the pomps of old. 

December, 1908. 



RUSKINIAN. 

Dedicated to John Ruskin (1819-1900) and 
Rose La Touche (1849-1875) 

Once thy mother let thee love me, 

I was fifty, thou wert ten ; 
By the sacred Minnehaha 

Oft we roamed together then ; 
Grief consumed me, torture tore me, 

Thou wert all the world to me : 
Now that I am old and weary 

Let me dream of Love and Thee. 



Once thy mother let thee love me, 

Now she says we must forget; 
Puritanic lore forbids us, 

Bids us warble: "Strangers yet!" 
Dark the valley, long and lonely, 

While I fail thy form to see : 
Darling ! I am old and weary, 

Let me dream of Love and Thee. 

Once thy mother let thee love me. 

Soon her nay will not be nay. 
Soon my journey will be ended, 

I am going far away — 
Far away from earth and parting, 

Going where the shadows flee : 
I shall wait and dream, my Rosa ! 

I shall dream of Love and Thee. 



DEATH IN THE OPEN AIR 

In reply to the jeer of Professor Garbe in his In- 
dien und das Christentum (Tiibingen, 1914, p. 16, 
apropos of Buddhist and Christian Gospels, Tokyo, 
1905, p. 218; Philadelphia, 1908-1914, Vol. 2, p. 169; 
Palermo, 1913, p. 249.) 

All over Christendom the painter paints 

The Crucifixion, over Buddhadom 

Parinirvana — tragedies august 

No stifling stye of palace or of slum 

Could consecrate, but only open air. 

Life in the open air, saith poet Poe, 

Is one of manhood's prime necessities 

Of happiness ; and in the open air 

Did work and die earth's mighty Masters twain. 

May, 1914. ; . . 



BENJAMIN LYMAN, 
(American Geologist, 1835-1920). 

Friend Lyman talks of boredom in the world 
Beyond the grave, as if the soul might tire 
Of living on for ever. Dying sage ! 
Here in our little Cheltenham, thy mind. 
Brimming with facts of geologic lore. 
Grasps not the vast resources of the heart. 
Such is the marriage of immortal saints 
They die into each other till they know 
That God is love and God is in them both. 
Then comes a third and then a fourth and more 
Until a whole congeries throbs as one. 
Thus life can wax to all eternity 
And ne'er be sated. Even here we thrill 
To meet another, and our hearts explore 
With zest the labyrinths of stranger lives, 
Doubling and trebling, multiplying ours 
By endless love-arithmetic. What then? 
New worlds to conquer ! "Love's rare universe," 
As the rapt Shelley sang, shall be our Heaven. 

August 25, 1920. 

THE SEA-BATH. 
To Margaret, aged six. 

The summer glows, my darling, 
The waves around us break. 

They purge the winter paleness 
And vernal roses make. 

But, more than bounding billows 
And more than cheeks aglow. 

The surges calm and heal us 
And wash out many a woe. 



An endless incantation 

From endless regions rolled, 

This mighty tidal music 
Links us with souls untold. 

From climes and times beyond us 
The thought-waves o'er us roll, 

We ne'er can lose each other 
In such a sea of soul. 

The waves can make no strangers, 
No land their wholeness mars^- 

The billows of the nations, 
The billows of the stars ! 

I'm young with thee, my darling ! 

And thou art old with me 
In these cold salt embraces 

Of Time's eternal sea ! 

Avalon, N. J., September 7, 1912. 

ANNA, SARAH, MAY. 

Once again the lilac blossomed, 

Once again ; 
Once again I walkt with Sarah, 

Once again; 
Anna too was at my side 
In the mystic, deep May morning. 
Heaven's annual spring-tide ; 
And it bore them on its bosom. 
Bore my darling golden Anna, 
Bore my changeless, constant Sarah, 



Bore them like the lilac blossom, 
Sailing, sailing on its bosom, 
On the bosom of the spring-tide 
Once again. 

May, 1919. 

A CHOICE OF KAISERS. 

On the frozen Gulf of Dantzig, 
Which the Northern streamers haunt, 

Reigned of old a German Kaiser 
And his glorious name was Kant. 

Deep the arches of his empire. 
Sunken in the human mind, 

While his name abroad is wafted 
On the planetary wind. 

'Twain the things that overawe me," 
Was the Kaiser's ancient saw ; 

"Namely, yonder starry welkin 
And the inward moral law." 

Germans, will ye serve your Kaiser? 

Deem ye not his soul a match 
For the chief who murdered Europe 

By the falsified dispatch? 

Germans, is it Kant or Bismarck 
Who shall rule your lives today. 

Hurling midnight bombs at babies. 
Or proclaiming wisdom's way? 

Far and wide your Heinrich Heine 
Reigneth over hearts that feel. 



Will you change eternal empire 
For the hells of fire and steel? 

Germans, choose this day your Kaiser, 
Choose for ever, choose him well ; 

Earth and Heaven await your answer- 
Christ or Judas, who can tell? 

August, 1914. 

BLOSSOMS. 

Lo, 'tis August, but an odor 
As of May the day perfumes, 

Like the trees on dying Buddha 
Shedding their untimely blooms. 

Evermore I know the odor 

Like a sea of blossom wild. 
Evermore I feel before me 

One eternal Saviour child. 

'Tis her soul that makes the whiteness 
Of the foamy bloom appear, 

Tis her soul that pours a fragrance 
Thru the cycle of the year; 

'Tis her soul so far above me 
Where no human feet have trod, 

Like the tree of life in blossom 
In the paradise of God. 

August, 1910. 



FM ONLY A LITTLE THING. 

mother, please don't scold me ; 

Upon my way from school 
Of course I know I've loitered, 

For the playground air was cool ; 
And then there were dirt-pie gardens 

And bars and a glorious swing; 
Please don't be angry, mother, 

I'm only a little thing! 

Dear child ! I stand in the starlight 

And gaze at the orbs above. 
Then think of thy words and wonder 

If I unto Infinite Love 
Might cry when the worlds are crashing 

And a last wild splendor fling: 
"I've loitered late on the playground, 

I'm only a little thing!" 

April, 1914. 



FAIRMOUNT PARK. 



O'er Babylonian garden 

And Persian paradise 
And Indian aramo 

My soaring fancy flies ; 
Manorial halls of England, 

In beechen shadow dark, — 
I leave them all, alighting 

At length in Fairmount Park. 

2. 
Thou wild ! I long have loved thee,- 

Hardly the work of man, 
Except for fringe of railway 

And bridges' airy span ; 
But maple, pine and cedar 

Invoke the soul to soar. 
Anticipate her future. 

Or muse on heretofore. 

3. 
With many a friend I've wandered, 

For many a year in thee ; 
In thee I've thought and written. 

Till echoes roll to me, 
Reverberant o'er ocean 

With words that first were penned 
Among thy lordly meadows. 

And where thy streams descend. 



4 
The smoke of Philadelphia, 

A spectral haze afar, 
Can harm me not, protected 

As thine environs are : 
No chapman's vulgar blazon 

May here affront the eye. 
No hearse, nor funeral pageant 

May come this highway nigh. 

5. 
No swine thy meads may wander, 

Nor goats nor dogs be free : 
Without are such : old symbols 

Of sin depart from thee ! 
No hunter's arm may murder 

Or fray thy birds away : 
We here may drink nepenthe 

To kin with beasts of prey. 

6. 
The weight of our existence 

Thy gentle breezes lift. 
And calm adown the Schuylkill 

A poet's dream may drift ; 
Autumnal tints are glorious 

On Wissahickon Heights 
As all that once to Ruskin 

Revealed unearthly lights. 



The poet of " The Raven" 

Hath mused thy woods among, 
And Moore hath felt the Schuylkill 

Inspire his tuneful tongue. 
Our classic names what Vandal 

For storied writ condemns, 
When Gibbon ranked the Delaware 

With Ganges and with Thames ? 



Here Franklin oft hath wandered 

In eighteenth-century calm, 
When Sunday meant a Sabbath 

And care could find a balm ; 
While e'en amid the turmoil 

Of our one hundredth year 
The youthful Rock hill pondered 

On Orient wisdom here. 



9. 
Ah, lovely Wissahickon ! 

If but the past were thine, 
And Greeks were nigh to worship, 

Thy foam would be divine ; 
Within thy noonday twilight 

The muse a shrine would rear. 
And on thy cliffs at evening 

The gods would oft appear. 



10. 
But Quaker vied with German 

To turn thy stream to gain, 
To churn thy holy waters 

With mills at every lane. 
Then burst the Revolution, 

And Hessian cannon boomed 
Among thy hills, " horrendous" 

To martial soul begloomed. 

11. 
The mills are now in ruin. 

Gone are the warlike roars. 
And Fairmount Park enfoldeth 

Thy thrice enchanted shores : 
Oh, may some genius guard thee 

From foul invasion now 
By sons of Belial-Jehu 

Before whose gold we bow. 

12. 
Thy trees, like lines of mountain. 

Serrated high in air, 
Thy broadening pool reposeful, 

Unutterably fair, 
In solitudes of morning 

Exalt the daily round ; 
Yet all this Alpine wildness 

Is in the civic bound. 



13. 

Could Socrates or Gotamo 

In contemplation walk 
Beneath thy fiery woodland, 

And by thy waters talk, 
The shades that erst were hallowed 

By Washington and Penn 
Were fitting Academias 

To hive new thought for men. 

14. 
When Buddha 'neath the sal-trees 

Which, all one mass of bloom 
With blossoms out of season, 

Shed o'er him their perfume. 
With Anando beside him. 

Composed himself to die. 
The prophet of the open air 

By no means bade good-bye. 

15. 

For us the sacred heir-loom. 

From Plato in the Grove 
And Jesus on the mountain, 

The weft of Scripture wove ; 
And in the long hereafter 

Who knows what thunder-voice. 
In Pennsylvanian gardens. 

May make the world rejoice ? 



16. 

Not only beating hammers 

And rush of railway roar 
Shall wake thy rural echoes, 

As now, for evermore : 
The dream of man will alter 

When, through titanic rifts 
In cloudy lines of battle, 

The ages' drama shifts. 

17. 

When mines are spent, and millions 

Obey the ancient law, 
Avaunt the " steeple-chimney " 

CarIvYLE beheld with awe ; 
No more the pall in heaven, 

No more the stream defiled, 
For man shall then be master, 

And yet eternal child. 

18. 
Again the shepherd quiet 

Shall o'er the planet rest. 
And forms adored aforetime 

Be worshipped in the West : 
The pipe of Pan shall soothe us. 

To Dryad haunts enticed, 
And summer hills re-echo 

The pastoral prayer of Christ. 

Fairmount Park and Gerniantown : 
igo2-igo6. 



NOTES, 

Verse 1. 

Line 2. Paradise is a Persian word carried over into the 
Hebrew of the Old Testament and the Greek of the New. 
(D"l"lS in Eccles. ii 5 and Canticles iv 13 ; Tra/aaSao-os in Lnke 
xxiii 43 ; 2 Cor. xii 4 ; Apoc. ii 7). Palestine was a Persian 
province for two hnndred years, and this word is one ont of 
several connecting links between Mazdeism and Christianity. 
Its original meaning was simply a park, nntil Hebrew and Chris- 
tian eschatology transfignred it to mean the abode of the Blessed. 

Line 3. Aramo (pronounced Ahrahmo) is the Pali word for 
a park, (Sanskrit aramas). As rich patrons presented parks to 
the Buddhist Order in its early days, the word came to mean a 
cloister-garden. It is cognate with the '^py]ii.o% (wilderness) of 
the New Testament, which means a lonely place. In the Sacred 
Books of the East, edited by Max Miiller, aramo is contracted 
into the stem-form arama, which, as Karl Neumann rightly says, 
is neither Sanskrit nor Pali. In my translations from Pali I 
use the nominative case in transcribing proper names, for the 
sake of correctness, following the scholarly instinct of the 
Greeks, who were the first Europeans to transliterate Sanskrit 
words. But in poetry I use this form in -o, not merely for cor- 
rectness, but for music. Edwin Arnold, in \\\s, Light of Asia- 
has the noble line : 

" The Buddha died, the great Tathagato." 
This would be spoilt by the barbarous Europeanised " Tathaga, 
ta," which is the stem-form of the word and also the vocative 
case, and should never be used in transcription. 

To those who object to the introduction of this Pali word 
aramo into the present poem, I reply that it is as lawful as 
Academia in Verse 7. Our culture for ages has been pro- 
vincial, having the Mediterranean Sea for its centre, and Greece, 
Rome and Judaea for its classic nations. But since the acquisi- 
tion of India by the English, and still more of the Philippine 
Islands by the Americans, bringing in their train the revolution 
of trade routes and the translation of the Sacred Books of the 



East, our culture is becoming cosmic, with the Pacific Ocean, 
instead of an inland lake, for its centre ; and to our own classic 
nations we must now add India first and foremost, and after- 
wards the Chinese and Persian Empires. When this new plan- 
etary culture supplants the provincial, the aramo immortalized 
by Gotamo will be just as classic as the Academy immortalized 
by Plato. We shall then be able to appreciate Edward Gibbon's 
collocation of Persians and Chinamen with Greeks : — " the 
learned and civilized nations of the South : the Greeks the 
Persians and the Chinese." {Decline and Fall^ Chapter 26.) 

Verse 2. 

Line 4. " Echoes " refers to certain passages in the preface 
to my translation of the Dhammapada, quoted by British re- 
viewers. This preface was written in the Park, in the meadow 
beside Memorial Hall, September, 1901. 

Line 7. I should almost prefer : 

" Thy lordly lawns around me." 
But an adverbial phrase in the nominative absolute is obscure 
to many. This is one of the drawbacks of a weakly inflected 
language. In Sanskrit and Pali, Greek and Latin, the phrase 
would be perfectly clear, being in the locative absolute in the 
first two, and in the genitive and ablative respectively in the 
two last. 

Verse 4. 

Line 5. Some would prefer : 

" No vile commercial blazon." 

But this is too sonorous : I purposely made this line harsh. 
As to any who may object to the antique word " chapman," I 
must ask them to read that noblest monument of classical Eng- 
lish, the King James version of the Old Testament. (2 Chron. 
ix 14). " Chapman " (i. e. shopman or cheapman : compare 
Cheapside, Copenhagen, etc.) is simply the English word for 
" merchant," which is French. It is best known in these deca- 
dent days, by its colloquial contraction, "chap." For "chap- 
man," see Shakespeare : Love's Labour's Lost," Act II, Scene 1 ; 
Troilus and Cressida, Act IV, Scene 1. Also Burns : Tam O' 
Shanter ; Epitaph on Thomas Kennedy of New York ; and 
Election Ballad, No. 4. 

10 



Verse 5. 

This verse was written on October 22, 1902, after re-reading 
the Park Regulations. 

The last line refers to the Darwinian doctrine, which I have 
held since 1880. 

Verse 6. 

The allusion to Wissahickon Heights, and indeed the whole 
poem, was inspired by a walk to the Wissahickon with the 
T family on Sunday, October 20, 1002. 

Line 7. See Ruskin's description of autumn foliage at Ar- 
icia, in Modern Painters^ Vol 1, chapter on truth of color. 

Verse 7. 

Edgar Allan Poe lived in Philadelphia from 1838 to 1844. 
The Philadelphia Directory for 1843 gives his residence as : 
" Coates, near Fairmount," i. e. F'airmount Avenue, near the 
old Park. The Directory for 1844 has : " Seventh, above Spring 
Garden." 

Thomas Moore was in Philadelphia in 1804. See his " Lines 
on leaving Philadelphia," and especially his Epistle to W. R. 
Spencer, written from Buffalo, N. Y. After reproaching the 
United States for its then lack of culture, he breaks forth : 

" Yet, yet forgive me, oh ! you sacred few 
Whom late by Delaware's green banks I knew." 

And again : 

" Believe me, Spencer, while I winged the hours 
Where Schuylkill undulates through banks of flowers," etc. 

Moore was the guest of Joseph Dennie, editor of the Portfolio^ 
and at that time the leader of American letters. He was called 
the American Addison. There is a picture of him at the His- 
torical Society of Pennsylvania, and a long account by Albert 
H. Smyth, in his "Philadelphia Magazines": Phila., 1892. 
Dennie lived at 113, Walnut street, which, says Dr. John W. 
Jordan, was at that time near Third street. 

Scharf and Westcott's History of Philadelphia (1884) ex- 
plodes the theory that Moore occupied a cottage in the Park. 

In recent times the word Schuylkill has become a by-word 
and a jest throughout the Republic, on account of its foul drink- 
ing-water. But no corrupt politics, which has delayed so long 

11 



the now coming filtration, has been able to efface the beauty of 
the Schuylkill beween Fairmount Dam and the Falls, to say 
nothing of that river's upper reaches. For a splendid scientific 
description of the Schuylkill, see J. P. Lesley's Summary De- 
scription of the Geology of Pennsylvania : Harrisburgh, 1892, 
vol. 1, p. 118. 

Lines 7 and 8. " The conquests of our language and liter- 
ature are not confined to Europe alone, and a writer who suc- 
ceeds in London is speedily read on the banks of the Delaware 
and the Ganges." Gibbon : Autobiography, Chap. 24. From 
MS. E. 

This whole verse I added on account of the criticism of a 
friend who objected that the Schuylkill was not a fit subject for 
poetry ! 

Verse 8. 

Line 1. See Franklin's Autobiography. 

Line 7. William Woodville Rockhill, the diplomatist, was 
born in Philadelphia in 1854 ; studied Eastern languages in 
France ; served in Algeria, 1873-1876 ; and is well known as 
the author of the best account in English of the Tibetan re- 
cension of the Buddhist Scriptures. 

Verse 10. 

Line 7. Armstrong, in his official report on the battle of, 
Germantown, says that he carried off one field-piece, but was 
obliged to leave the other "in the Horrenduous \^sic\ hills of 
the Wissihickon." [sic] (Letter to Thomas Wharton, dated: 
Lancaster, Oct. 5, 1777.) 

Verse 13. 

Line 6. It is well known that Washington lived in Phila- 
delphia from 1790 to 1797. His house, demolished in 1833, 
occupied the site of 526, 528 and 530, Market street. See me- 
morial tablet ; also, Washington after the RevohUio7i^ by Wil- 
liam Spohn Baker. (Phila., 1898). 

Verse 14. 

Sal is pronounced "sahl." For this glorious passage from 
the Pali Book of the Great Decease, see Sacred Books of the 
East, Vol. XI, p. 86. " All one mass of bloom " is a faithful 

12 



translation by Rhys Davids of a magnificent Pali phrase : sahba- 
ph ali-ph 11 lid. 
_Ana7ido (pronounced "Ahnnndo") is commonly written 
Ananda. He was Buddha's beloved desciple. 

Verse 15. 

That Plato, through Philo the Jew, has influenced the New 
Testament, see Percy Gardner's Exploratio Evangelica : Lon- 
don, 1899. This work has been well described by a German 
scholar as the best account of the origin of the Gospels in Eng- 
lish. The Platonic philosophy appears especially in John and 
the Epistle tq_the Plebrews. See also Col. I, 15, 16. 

Line 6. "Anando with his thunder-voice recites the Sutras." 
Wong-pu's Life of Buddha (Scec. VII.) 

Verse 17. 

Line 3. Carlyle : Past and Present^ chapter on the Twelfth 
Century. 

Line 8. " The great man is he who does not lose his child- 
heart."— Mencius. Shelley has been called " The Eternal Child." 

A poem on the Park, entitled Faire-Moiint^ by Henry Peter- 
son, appeared at Philadelphia in 1874. It opens with some 
noble lines : 

" On Schuylkill's banks, where hills of beauty rise, 
'Neath the deep blue of Pensylvania skies. 

Oft have I wandered, from the world apart. 
To feed the immortal hunger of the heart." 
The author deals chiefly with Robert Morris and other Revo- 
lutionary heroes. 



13 



A VANISHED CAPITAL. 



In a day long dead, by a river wide, 
A city, now as if glorified — 
Vanished, extinct as a grave in Greece — 
Asylum lent to the sons of peace. 

The walks were planted with shady trees. 
And gardens perfumed the High Street breeze ; 
The founder's home was of storeys twain. 
And every road was a country lane. 

Some crowded alleys and courts were there. 
But all were nigh to the river fair. 
Where quaint old ships, with their sails unfurled. 
The fame of the city took round the world. 

Up High Street now in a dream I drive ; 
'Tis seventeen hundred and ninety-five ; 
One Edmund Hogan^ my coachman is, 
Who knoweth the capital's mysteries. 

At Second Street are the Court House^ grey 
And a crowded mart^ in the midst of the way, 
And over against it a house of prayer*: — 
The Quaker CathedraP some call it there. 

Here lately a shrewd little schoolboy^ sat. 
Noting each Friend in his broad-brimmed hat. 
And painting at last, through the long years' mist, 
A scene to be used by the Annalist. 

James Pemberton sits here, shine or rain. 
With both hands crossed on his ancient cane. 
And Nicholas Wai^n with a smile is seen, 
And Thomas Scattergood's eye serene. 
While Arthur Howell's enshrouded guise 
Is wrapped in a mystery, prophet-wise. 

14 



^olian harp-tones rise and fall 
When William Savery's lips recall 
The Quaker message of light and peace, 
Whose vibrant music shall never cease. 

A sound from a forge the heart hath stirred 
When Daniel Offley proclaimed the word. 
Two years ago of the plague'^ he fell, 
When Evangeline mourned her Gabriel. 
But who can recount the worthies here ? 
Reprover, consoler and mystic seer.® 

At Ninth Street reach we the city's verge 
Where woods in the open country merge ; 
But turn we away from the grass that rolls 
To see the vision of human souls. 

Behold Another who walks our stones. 
With an iron will that has humbled thrones ; 
No Quaker he, but a warrior form, 
That rode on the wings of the battle-storm. 
Just now the sage of a nation free, 
Enthroned like Simon the Maccabee. 

Yes, along this road on the left there stands 
A mansion famous in many lands f 
The High Street here is adorned with trees,'" 
Where Washington holdeth his state levees. 

One hundred and ninety his numbered door ; 
But the President's palace is now no more ; 
For, alas ! I wake from the reverie sweet 
In a twentieth-century Market Street. 

Where he with Hamilton ofttimes met 
In that Olympian Cabinet — 
Gone, gone with the gods of the Nevermore, 
Now merchants barter and waggons roar. 



15 



Ah ! feel we never, who Fifth Street cross, 
As thoiiofh we had shot the albatross ? 
For holy ground unto man and God 
Were the halls where the nation's hero trod. 

"Aside, on the benches of Franklin Square, 
A workman at eve released from care 
May dream of the wilds of the days of old 
And list for the tread of the searcher bold 
Who here the immortal kite let fly 
And snatched the bolt from an angry sky ; 
He snatched the soul from a thunderstorm. 
And power from a towering tyrant-form — 
The boy forlorn with the weary feet. 
Who wheeled his burden on Market Street. 

O Market Street ! in what region vast 
Are all these phantoms from out thy past? 

Now noise succeeds to the Quaker trance. 
And iron cars to the horses' prance, 
And, for storeys twain to a home of prayer. 
Phalansteries piled by a millionaire. 

O Quaker City ! what days are these ? 
No rest at eve under High Street trees. 
No sunrise call on the watchman's round. 
No silent city in sleep profound. 

For a tidal wave from the age of steam 
Hath carried away that antique dream. 
And in vain we search for the hero-race 
'Mid jar and jangle of commonplace. 

^^The blades, whereby in the Delaware, 
Poor Fitch careered on her waters fair. 
Now multiplied by a thousandfold, 
Have borne us far from the days of old. 

16 



Where once an august Convention bound 
God's newborn States in a league profound 
Now demons juggle with freemen's lives — 
All free to struggle when usury thrives. 

Where Friends once pondered in Centre Square'^ 
There now* sinks hellward a daily prayer 
That the rights of man in the dust be trod 
Till the Hall be ripe for the wrath of God. 

Oh, give us the years, so far and fleet, 

When ambassadors lived down Market Street !'^ 

Yet know I souls with a hope sublime,^^ 
Who pray for the dawn of a juster time ; 
With white wings folded, their hearts pursue 
The quiet life, with the goal in view. 

They only wait for a Fox or Penn 
To gather the children of God again. 
Oh, who shall garner this human wheat, 
Now lost in the crowd on Market Street ? 

All, all we crave is the rallying cry. 
To make these days as the days gone by ; 
To make them more, for the God we need 
Is a life-power keeping the freeman freed. 
Purge hall and hovel with air of morn, 
Command that a weakling shall never be born. 

Ah, Philadelphia ! there doth remain 
From those lost ages one faded fane ; 
We guard and laud it with heart and lip, 
As Athens guarded the sacred ship. 

* Written early in 1905. 

17 



The Ark of the nation's fate it seems, 

And ever it haunts our stormy dreams, 

As on that day^'' when a Lincoln gazed 

At its mouldering stones and the flag he raised. 

That mystic minster had thrilled him through, 

And the prayer he uttered was all too true. 

By night he rode as a man unknown^^ 
Down Seventeenth Street till the hour had flown. 
And a train from the Southern depot bore 
The nation's elect unto Baltimore. 

That depot dark is a heritage 
From the troublous times of our middle age, 
But the railroad's birth and the Civil War 
Have left the State House calm as of yore. 

We love thee, O vision old and sweet 
Amidst the Rialto of Chestnut Street, — 
Thou stranded salvage of bygone years ! 
Thou star of a thousand hopes and fears ! 

'Twas here the lightning of modern time 
Flashed forth from thee with a thunder chime; 
For forty summers were kings repulsed,^® 
And earth and heaven in wrath convulsed. 

If the freed for freedom must fight once more, 
God grant us a sage from the days of yore ! 
May no NapolKON ever be. 
But another Washington throned in thee. 

No bank's proud portal, no civic tower. 
Can awe the heart with a half thy power, 
And even the belfry of Christ Church old 
No tone like thine on the breeze hath rolled. 

For never cathedral chime could swell 
An American heart as the Liberty Bell : 
The State is more than the Church, I trow — 
The Federal Westminster Abbey thou ! 
1905 and 1906. 

18 



NOTES. 



^ Author of The Prospect of Philadelphia^ which is a directory 
for 1795, arranged by streets. In this book one can walk about 
the old city in imagination, among streets haunted by French 
emigres and all the motley population of the time. 

2 Built in 1707, demolished in 1837. 

* In 1795 the market sheds extended along the middle of High 
Street from Front to Fourth. See John Hills' map of 1796. 

* "The Great Meeting House," built in 1695, rebuilt in 1755, 
and supplanted by Arch Street meeting-house in 1804. It was 
at the S. W. corner of Second and Market Streets, and is mem- 
orable as the scene of Franklin's first sleep in Philadelphia ! 

^ Watson's Annals of Philapelphia, Vol. I, p. 500. The pagi- 
nation of this book (except for some appendices) has been un- 
changed since 1844. The fine old first edition of 1830 contains 
plates which were never reproduced. The art of engraving 
appears to have degenerated after the opening of the railroad 
age. These plates have a national, not merely a local signifi- 
cance, so that I was astonished to find the book lacking in the 
Boston Public Library during a tour through the libraries of 
New England and New York in the summer of 1905. I con- 
sider this book one of the most remarkable productions of the 
last century. Its author, born during the American Revolution 
and dying on the eve of the Civil War, saw with his own eyes 
the transition from old Philadelphia, with its pillories, tinder- 
boxes and tiny window-panes in shops up flights of steps, to the 
noisy metropolis that builds locomotives for a hemisphere. The 
passages added to the later editions are very instructive, es- 
pecially those on the decay of monarchical manners and the rise 
of republican ones. The great changes which passed over Phila- 
delphia between 1840 and 1859 are alluded to by Edwin Har- 
wood, in his address to the Pennsylvanian Alumni in the latter 
year : " The College has changed ; the town has no longer its 
staid old uniform appearance." 

^ William McKoy, first teller in the Bank of North America. 
See Watson I, 182 and 507. This man wrote, under the pen- 

19 



name of Lang Syne, a series of reminiscences of Philadelphia in 
Poulson's American Daily Advertiser for 1828-1829. {Poiilson's 
was an ancestor of our present North American). A few of 
these articles were reprinted in Samuel Hazard's Register of 
Pennsylvania^ but most of them have never been reprinted. 
They are to be found pasted into Watson's MS. Annals at the 
Historical Society of Pennsylvania. They ought to be pub- 
lished in book form. Watson speaks highly of McKoy's lively 
style, and regrets that the latter's position in life did not per- 
mit him to write more. Some German critic of the future 
may hunt up these articles with the zest of a scholar searching 
for lost sources of Tacitus. McKoy's description of the Quaker 
ministers has here been partially versified. " An imperturbable 
severity rested upon the dark features of Thomas Scattergood," 
says the text, where severity is an obvious newspaper misprint 
for serenity. McKoy's name last appears in the Directory for 
1831. He lived at 8 Powell Street, which ran from Fifth to 
Sixth, above Pine. 

'' Daniel Offiey, the Quaker blacksmith, died of the yellow 
fever in October, 1793. See Biographical Sketches a7id Anec- 
dotes of Friends. Philadelphia, 1871. [By Joseph Walton]. 
When Watson (I. 430) speaks of " the reminiscent " looking 
through the Front Street windows of Offley's anchor forge, he 
is quoting McKoy. 

* Samuel Emlen. 

^ Among many travelers who called on Washington in those 
years may be mentioned Chateaubriand, the celebrated reaction- 
ary writer of the French Restoration. In 1791 he was an ob- 
scure young man, as he says himself, while Washington was at 
the height of his fame. Speaking of the presidential abode, he 
says : " Une petite maison dans le genre anglois, ressemblant 
aux maisons voisines, etoit le palais du president des Etats-Unis : 
point de gardes, pas meme de valets." A maidservant said, 
' Walk in, sir,' and walked before him " dans un de ces etroits 
et longs corridors qui servent de vestibule aux maisons an- 
gloises." Chateaubriand presented a letter from Colonel Ar- 
mand (then Marquis de la Rouairie), and proceeded to tell the 
president of his youthful ambition to explore the North-West 
Passage. Perceiving that Washington was bored, he cried : 
" Mais il est moins difficile de decouvrir le passage du nord-ouest 
que de creer un peuple comme vous 1' avez fait !" Whereupon 

20 



the father of his country was moved, and extending his hand, 
exclaimed, " Well, well, young man !" followed by an invitation 
to dinner. Next day the feast was set, and the two notables, 
with five more, sat down at 528 Market Street to discuss the 
French Revolution. 

^^ Hills' magnificent map of 1796 shows that the Market 
Street trees began at Fifth Street. The president's mansion 
occupied the ground now covered by numbers 526-530. It was 
demolished in 1833. [JVashington After the Revolution. By 
William Spohn Baker, sometime vice-president of the Historical 
Society of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia, 1897, p. 184.) 

" The exact site of the famous kiteflying is unknown : it was 
Parton who suggested Eighth and Race Streets, while Fisher 
says it was probably near Fourth and Vine. We have no detailed 
account by Franklin himself. He wrote an impersonal descrip- 
tion of an electric kite, dated Oct. 19, 1752, printed in The 
Pennsylvania Gazette of that date, sent as a letter to Peter Col- 
linson, and reprinted in the collected works. But the famous 
narrative of the promising cloud that disappointed him, of the 
shed in "the commons," where he took shelter with his son, etc., 
is derived from Stuber's continuation to the Autobiography, 
though it first appeared separately in the Columbian Magazine 
(Philadelphia, 1790). This account in turn is merely repeated, 
with glosses, from that by Joseph Priestley, in his History and 
present state of Electricity. (London, 1767, p. 180). Priestley, 
in his preface, states that Franklin had given him information. 
So we have Franklin's facts in Priestley's words. It will be 
recognized by the student of American history that I have here 
versified in English the famous hexameter line on Franklin by 
Turgot : 

Eripuit coelo fulmen sceptrumque tyrannis. 

'^ John Fitch navigated the Delaware in a steamboat for both 
freight and passengers during the entire summer of 1790, as 
contemporary newspapers abundantly prove. In the Phila- 
delphia Directory for 1791 we read : 

" Fitch, John, owner of the steam boat, 462 No[rth] Second 
Street." 

As early as August 22, 1787, he exhibited an earlier steam 
boat to most of the members of the Federal Convention, except 
Washington, while his first experiments were earlier still. See 
his Life by Westcott. Fulton, in the next century, got all the 

21 



glory ; but the courts decided that he merely repeated the plans 
of Fitch. 

"^ For the old Centre Square meeting-house, see Watson I, 
391. I wrote these lines early in 1905, when the notorious 
" gang " were at the height of their power. 

'* In 1795, the Dutch ambassador was at 258, High Street 
(Market Street, south side, between Seventh and Eighth), and 
the Portuguese ambassador in Franklin's Court (south side of 
High Street between Third and Fourth). See Hogan's Prospect^ 
pp. 10 and 12. 

^^ These lines were added after a conversation with a member 
of the Historical Society, who, upon hearing the poem, declared 
that present-day morality was superior to that of the eighteenth 
century. 

^^ February 22, 1861, at 6 A. M., according to Nicolay and 
Hay, Vol. Ill, p. 310. But this was the hour when the crowds 
began to gather. A committee waited upon Lincoln at the Con- 
tinental Hotel at seven o'clock, and took him to the Hall, so 
that the speeches must have been made between seven and 
eight. {Public Ledger^ February 23, 1861). In the speech 
made in the Hall just before the flag-raising, Lincoln said : " I 
was about to say that I would rather be assassinated on this spot 
than surrender it" (i. e., the principle embodied in the Decla- 
ration of Independence). See Lincoln's Complete Works, Vol. 
I, p. 691. N. Y., 1894). 

" Letter of H. F. Kenney, Dec. 23, 1867, in Allan Pinkerton's 
History and Evidence of the Passage of Abraham Lincoln from 
Harrisburgh to Washington^ on February 22 and 2j^ 1861. 
(Chicago, 1868, p. 12). Lincoln had to "kill time" on this 
famous night journey, and was driven across Philadelphia by a 
circuitous route. 

^^ The American Revolution was the beginning of the long 
struggle of democracy with aristocracy which ended (tempora- 
rily) in 1815. 



22 



RAIN AT SEA. 

The elements all overwhelm and astound me, 
And baring- my brow to the brunt of the rain, 

I ask of the universe mourning around me, 
What comfort can flow from its infinite pain ? 

No answer, but only the dull desolation ? — 
Then, oh that the surges were over me thrown. 

That the watery roar of the great lamentation, 
Unmeaning, unheeded, were rolling alone ! 

Nay, deeper than grief is the dirge of the ocean. 
And breathing beneath it a quiet release, 

A sweetness, a calm that is more than emotion ; 
For infinite sadness is infinite peace. 
1881. 



THE SACRED BOOKS OF THE EAST. 

Light the torch of thought at midnight. 
Watch the forms of history file 

Down the aisles of old religions ; 
Wake and let us muse awhile. 

First the shade of Zoroaster 
Shimmers in the shadow dim ; 

Fleets and armies of Darius 

Caught the glint of heaven from him. 

What remains of all his altars ? 

Where the temple's vast fa9ade ? 
Are his wrestlings in the Gathas? 

Are his laws the Vendidad ? 



23 



F'ragments all ; the Nosks have perished ; 

Wrecks and Contents meet our wish, 
Like the salvage of the Damdad 

Drifted in the Bundahish. 

Here we hear the battle-aeon — 

Ormazd, Ahriman, at war ; 
Till the lava burn the evil 

Into good for evermore. 

So from Bosphorus to Indus 

Did the Parsi Empire hope 
For the Hero and his helpers 

With the serpent-foe to cope. 

Into heaven soars Elijah ; 

Rightly doth Elisha cry : 
" lyO, the chariot of Israel 
And his horsemen in the sky !" 

Central in the world's religions 
Prophesy the Hebrew seers — 

One, from Moses to Ezekiel, 
More gigantic than his peers. 

Loftiest in the long procession 
He that never penned a line : 

'Tis the lightning of Elijah 
Makes the Covenant divine. 

Lo, the shade of Kung the Master, 
And the shores of fair Cathay, 

Underneath the stars receding 
Into ages great and grey. 

Twain millennia lay behind him. 
And for twain millennia more 
Lighted he the ranks of China 
With the lamps of heretofore. 

24 



Hark ! the tramp of tribes and ages, 
Echoing from Shii to Shih, 

And the nation's daily footsteps 
Resonant throughout the Li. 

In the trance of midnight, Lau-tza 
Climbs with Reason to her heights 

Round the immemorial Mystic 
Coruscate eternal lights. 

After Vedic Hymns to storm-gods 
And the One unborn Supreme, 

After sacrificial magic, 

Deeper yet the Indie dream. 

While Upanishads were musing, 
And the Sacred Laws began. 

All the burning soul, incarnate, 
Burst into a central Man. 

Gotamo the Sakya Lion 

Preached to princes in his train 
How the compounds of existence 

Are the origin of pain. 

Not thy dream of sad Nirvana, 
Mighty Master ! moves the heart. 

But thyself : of One diviner 
Thou the foregone shadow art. 

Far above the stately Sutras, 
Every tender act endears ; 

Jewelled in the Great Decease Book 
Anando's immortal tears. 

Spite of all thy stern remonstrance. 
Over Asia's ancient mind 

Swept a wave of tidal passion 
For a God from out mankind, 

25 



Hush ! We need not seek the sequel, 
How the moonlight paled away : 

Over Syria broke the morning 
And the Deity of day. 

Fiercely royal, towers Mohammed, 
Dark against that setting moon. 

Writing death to demon- worship 
In a fiery desert Rune. 

End the vigil and the vision ; 

But my window skyward looks, 
And for no less lofty learning 

Will I leave the Sacred Books. 
1895. 



WHEN IS THE TIME? 

Ere the rosy colors die. 
Ere the scented summers fly, 
Ere the years of youth on wings 
Fade with all delightful things, 
'Tis the time. 

While the pearls are on the marge, 
While the moon of life is large, 
While the chime of Easter bells 
Of the vernal triumph tells, 
'Tis the time. 

When the self to soul is turned, 
When the ways of love are learned. 
When with every virtue sweet 
Manliness and beauty meet, 

'Tis the time. 
1893-1899. 



26 



REQUIESCAT MARIANA. 



WITH AN OLD REFRAIN. 



Hush ! Within there reigns a silence 

O'er a sleeping fosterling ; 
Hark ! Without there thrills a music 

From the universe of spring ; 
Roses round the window sweep ; 
Little sister's gone to sleep. 

Tell the early trailing roses 

That they hide the boundless lea 

Where my soul would fain be roaming, 
From the haunted chamber free ; 

Roses, hide me while I weep : 

Little sister's gone to sleep. 

Blossoms of the endless orchard ! 

Billows of the endless sea ! 
Hide and bury me forever. 

Far from where she used to be : 
Roll above me dense and deep : 
Little sister's gone to sleep. 
1897. 



SONG IN MEASURE FOR MEASURE. 

Take, oh ! take thy form away. 

Only leave thy memory whole, 
Be my life from day to day, 

Be the soul within my soul ; 
From this world, oh ! set me free, set me free ; 
Let my self be lost in thee, lost in thee. 
1898. 

27 



1903. 



DECEMBER SUNSET. 
I love the winter sunset, 

I love his fiery eyes, 
I love the far-off purple 

Of Pennsylvanian skies, 
Where deep beneath the sky-line 

The last dead summer lies. 

Aromas of that summer 

Exhale into the air, 
The mountains and the rivers 

I passed are painted there. 
The likeness of the Lost One 

Is in that furnace fair. 

The flames of grief are silent, 
Like sunset hues they burn. 

And rising in the twilight 
I feel my love return, — 

A hundred summer sunsets 
Are in yon smouldering urn. 



A BICYCLE RIDE. 
The sweetness of eleven springs 

Is in that human flower 
Who rode with me on modern wings 

For one enchanted hour. 

I loved to ride a little space 

Behind my infant queen. 
To watch her form of airy grace. 

Arrayed in dainty green. 

28 



1899. 



The color of that little dress 

Was e'er as sweet to me 
As all the kindred loveliness 

On every April tree. 

Oh, tell her not the reason why 

I rode behind a space : 
I fear to fill that lovely eye 

With consciousness of grace. 

So let her think her wheels are swift, 
And mine are laggard-slow, 

That I may still adore that drift 
Of infant virgin snow. 



THE COAST AND THE SHORE. 
The coast's a stony prison, 

The shore is fair and free ; 
The coast confronts the ocean. 

The shore receives the sea. 

By day the sailor curses 
The coast as if the tomb ; 

By night he dreams of kisses 
On shores with homes a-bloom. 

The coast is where the sea-bird 
Is shrieking to the storm ; 

The shore is where my brothers 
Are round the ingle warm. 

Upon the coast I wander 
In solitude and care. 

Afar to seaward gazing — 
The shore is over there ! 
North Durham Coast: April, iSSj. 

29 



DOLDEN. 
A rare old town adown the bays 
Is Falmouth, in the dreamy days 
When August all her gold arrays, 

World-olden ; 
And here a beauteous boy I met, 
Who came to earth with memories yet 
Of suns that had not wholly set — 

Aye golden ! 

When he could hardly talk, he told 
Of what their eyes can ne'er behold 
Who know not of the Age of Gold 

In Dolden ; 
For such was his untutored name 
For some fair region whence he came 
And went, in visionary game : 

,Twas "Dolden." 

He saw the morning's argent car, 
He saw the virgin evening star, 
And said that all was fairer far 

In Dolden. 
But, Falmouth ! when he came to thee. 
And saw the forest meet the sea. 
He said, "This place on earth shall be 

My Dolden." 

I use, O child ! thy charmed eyes. 
As here I watch Orion rise 
Amid the sea-enamoured skies 

Of Dolden, 
Where once the wave of Shakspere's hand, 
Above Miranda's yellow sand, 
Brought Ariel from fairyland — 

All Dolden ! 



30 



Here Shelley heard the Skylark ope 
The Sensitive Plant on cloudy slope, 
And Browning kissed his Evelyn Hope 

In Dolden ; 
And children fair have breathed its air 
With Wordsworth in the light that ne'er 
On sea or land was anywhere 

Save Dolden. 

And here, O Lyra ! long ago. 

The splendours of the heavenly bow 

We stole, and brought to earth below 

From Dolden, 
When first we saw the sea, and met. 
And heard the white Diana set 
Our life-long, love-long own duet 

Like Dolden. 

And heard, alas ! the music bars 
The angels hymned on sad guitars 
To all thy world of weeping stars, 

O Dolden ! 
When we, with many a laden soul. 
Obeyed the earthward muster roll. 
And left the golden oriole 

In Dolden. 

But oft we glimpse a feather float. 
And hear a stray eternal note 
On sunset-haunted shore remote, 

Near Dolden ; 
And then we feel that all is best. 
That out of earth we build a nest 
Amid the starry palms of rest. 

In Dolden. 

IVesi Falmouth, Massachusetts, 1887. 

31 



The last verse but one of Dolden was altered without 
permission by the editor of the Anglo-Burmese magazine, 
Buddhism (Rangoon, November, 1904), The object of the 
mutilation appears to have been to introduce the doctrine 
of physical transmigration instead of the purely spiritual 
prse-existenec implied in the poem. 



THE LORELEI. 



FROM THK GERMAN OF HEINK. 



1889. 



I know not whate'er can have holden 
My soul to be sad to-night : 

A tale of the ages olden 

It haunts me with eerie light. 

The lift is cool, and it darkles. 
And restful flows the Rhine, 

The peak of the mountain sparkles 
In the holy evenshine. 

On high there sits and brightens 
A maid who is wildly fair ; 

Her golden adornment lightens, 
She combeth her golden hair. 

She combs with a comb that is golden, 
She sings a wonderful song, 

And hearts are in mystery holden 
By the strains of the melody strong. 

The heart of the skipper they capture, 
The skiff to the rocks is nigh, 

But all that he sees in his rapture 
Is the wildering vision on high. 

The waves of the river swallowed 
The boat in the setting sun. 

And the laugh of the Lorelei followed 
The deed that her song had done. 



32 



1891. 



BEATRICE. 
A love that is houses and raiment 

To me were a hunger and dearth ; 
So give me the love that is all love — 

The heaven without the earth. 

Beatrice Portinari, 

In the glow of her summers nine, 
Set fire to the lips of Dante 

With a coal from her soul divine. 

Unto him she was never a woman, 
But a spirit, an angel, a child. 

And a tower of eternal music 
In the light of her eyes he piled. 

I too have a Beatrice lent me, 
And I ask the Lord to spare 

Just one of the legion of angels 
Who wait on her evening prayer. 



GEOLOGY. 
Like shells upon the ocean floor, 
The wrecks of olden friendships lie, 
For new deposits, o'er and o'er, 
To rise in islands by and by. 

Like mountain dust in river beds, 
Washed by the rains of thought away 
With bones of vanished quadrupeds. 
Will sink the friendships of today. 

And youthful hopes, in shale and schist 

Upheaved in the later air. 

Will find a true geologist 

To lay their ancient record bare ; 

33 



While buried wrongs and Vulcan hates, 
Compressed in many a lava fold, 
Will roof with metamorphic slates 
The temples of the age of gold ; 

And old religions of the race, 
Imbedded in the minds of all, 
Will lift a gray primeval face 
On some historic mountain wall. 

Here or hereafter men will read, 
Or angels when the splendors tire. 
The life of every dream and creed, 
And every dead volcano fire. 

Then what, my friend, if thou and I — 
Two shells within the chalk preserved — 
Through ages of oblivion lie 
Till higher uses be subserved ? 

O'er universes deep and vast 
Our psychic atoms wander far, 
United or dissolved at last 
In some incalcuable star. 

And out of self's abysmal time 
To timeless being shall we go : 
Behind the scenes a life sublime 
Consumes the worlds of weal and woe. 

Upon the Parsi scroll of flame 

Is graven one eternal line : 

That heaven and hell appear the same 

To memory in the life divine. 



34 



Thou may'st be saved, and I be lost 
Some deity will reap the gain 
Of lives and deaths together tossed, 
To build a new diviner plane. 

So let us toil and suffer on. 
Nor meanly seek the reason why : 
Our little life will soon be gone 
With geologic aeons by. 
Fainnount Park : July, igoo. 



MY LOST HOME. 

When in my childhood by father caressed. 
When in my youth upon knowledge's quest. 
When in my manhood I strove to be free, 
All my life long I was seeking for thee. 

Many a maiden would beautiful seem — 
Fairies, but false to my deep inner dream : 
Over the continent, over the sea. 
All my life long I was seeking for thee. 

Lovely girl-children my fantasy found — 
Nearest of all to that untrodden ground, 
Nearest to Her who my heaven should be : 
All my life long I was seeking for thee. 

After false glamours had led me astray. 
Made me despair of the wearisome way, 
Fear that my loved one I never should see, 
All my life long I was seeking for thee. 

Then, when my midsummer fervours were past. 
Softly thy shadow came stealing at last — 
Peace more serene than the deeps of the sea ; 
Hardly I dared to believe it from thee. 

35 



Ah ! but the sweetest child-daughter was thine, 
Pure was her heart and her love was divine : 
Lost in the light that appeared to be she, 
Hardly I dreamt that the dream was of thee. 

Louisiana was bright in thine eyes, 
Tenderer North-lights within them would rise : 
Scotland and France and the ranks of the free 
Found an eternal alliance in thee. 

Just for a year did my life-river roll 
Full to the sea, with a soul in my soul : 
While the white glory was dawning on me. 
Death put an end to the finding of thee. 

O'er me for ever thy heavenly face, 
Lone as a star in the ocean of space. 
Beacons me on to the home that shall be : 
All my life-long I am seeking for thee. 

1903. 

TO MAY AT THE PIANO. 

The instrument appears a part of thee. 

And when thou leavest it I feel a shock 
As if I saw thine arm arrested. Be 

For ever set before it, on some rock 
Or solitary sea-shore, where the knock 

Of thy sweet fingers on responsive keys 
May make the soul of harmony unlock 

The portals of eternal music ! These 
And more than I can count of fancies wild 

Throng to my spirit as thy fingers fall. 
I know not whethet 'tis the girl or child 

That thus enchants me, or if one and all 
Of music's mighty masters fill my soul, 

But thou thyself art song, bright oriole ! 



1904. 



36 



1905. 



WISSAHICKON. 
Few and fleeting, Irenelle ! 

Are the moments we can love ; 
For upon me lies a spell 

From the silences above, 
And a guide thou canst not see 

Is to lead me far away : 
I must break my trance with thee 

At the breaking of the day. 

I must leave thee, Irenelle ! 

Here beside the haunted stream ; 
From the piny-scented dell 

Comes a token like a dream ; 
Like a waft from bygone lives 

Is the perfume of the pine, 
And my memory dips and dives 

Into seas unknown to thine. 

Look ! 'Tis dawning, Irenelle, 

Darkly in the forest glade : 
I must take a long farewell 

Of the silence and the shade, 
For the tempest in my soul 

Calls me onward o'er the sea, 
And a storm of years will roll 

Ere I come again to thee. 



THE SUNSET CITY. 
There's a city in the sunset. 

And its domes are known of old, — 
Known the glamour of the purple 

And the glory of the gold. 

37 



Buddha's eye had surely seen it : 
Anando had heard him tell 

Of the Palace of Religion, 
Where ideal virtues dwell. 

John beheld the Patmos waters, 
When the waves at eve were calm, 

Lighten with the lofty vision, 
Murmur with the far-off psalm. 

Yester eve I too beheld it. 
In the twilight's airy sea. 

Reddening deeper in the redness ; 
But the power was not from me. 

For my vision weak was aided 
By a childlike presence there, 

Elevating sight to seership. 
Meditation into prayer. 

Then I saw the Holy City, 

Where alone it e'er can be. 
Throned within the soul of childhood, 
And the spirit of the free. 
Fairmouni Park : July, 1902. 



1881. 



A DURHAM MEMORY. 
Child I found and left unknown. 

If we meet not at the goal. 
May thy pines above me moan 

Where thine upland breezes roll,- 

May the soil have all my soul, 
And this life, as lime or loam. 

Dye with deeper green the knoll 
Close beside thy lonely home ! 



38 



THE LIVING PAST. 



1880. 



IN MEMORY OF HENRY I.AWRENCE, B.A., WHO DIED 
AT HITCHIN, 1879. 

Thou knowest, quiet Hertfordshire, 

Where the grass is growing deep, 
Where the sunset shadows love to rest, 

And the early dewdrops weep ; 
And though with roar of rolling wheels 

We cross thy meadows fair. 
The heart is hushed, — we dream of him 

In his calm slumber there. 

Dead years have yet the fire of life 

In Memory's holy urn ; 
Her altars, heaped with frankincense 

Of bygone summers, burn ; 
And when in everlasting night 

We see yon sun decline. 
Deep in the soul his purple flames 

Eternally will shine. 

Be sure that all the love we need 

Will flow for ever ours, 
And, though no comrade watch with us 

Upon the dreary towers, 
Behind the soul's dim veil revealed. 

As on the Ark of yore. 
One holy solitude of light 

Reposeth evermore. 



THE CRIMSON RAMBLER. 
Beside me a rosy schoolgirl 

On the rest-day afternoon ; 
Before me a rose-tree climbing 

In the mid career of June. 

39 



1902. 



I asked of the human rose-bloom 
The name of the garden rose, 

And she called it a crimson rambler, 
For such is the lore she knows. 

Yon cloud is a crimson rambler, 

Afar in the dying west ; 
My heart is a crimson rambler, 

On an old eternal quest. 

The roses die with the June-tide, 
The cloud with the twilight wan. 

And the heats of the sultry noontide 
Kill hearts when the hopes are gone. 



SEPTEMBER AND DECEMBER. 
When last the leaves were falling 
I walked and talked with thee. 
And heart to heart was calling. 
Like birds from tree to tree. 

In earthly soil though planted. 
Our roots were deeply one. 

And in these ways enchanted 
Our leaves absorbed the sun. 
* * * * 

Thus far I sang September, 
And now the winter blows ; 

Experience, like December, 
Upon thy memory snows. 

So fast the flakes are falling 
I fear thy form may fade 

In silence more appalling 

Than on thy grave the shade. 

40 



1903. 



Can love be snowed thereunder? 

Can thought and learning kill 
The lightning and the thunder 

That once the clouds did fill? 

Shall clouds return to vapors, 

And vapors melt in air? 
Nirvana quench the tapers 

Of life's phantasmal prayer? 

Was Buddha by Nepala 

Beclouded out of truth ? 
Did terrors from Himala 

O'erwhelm his awful youth? 

Did Jesus by the Jordan 

A loftier vision know ? 
Is He the rightful warden 

Of souls that melt like snow ? 

Can any Power hereafter 

Our being whole restore? 
Shall heavenly roof and rafter 

O'erarch us twain once more? 

Appear to me by noontide 
When life is beating high ; 

Appear to me in June-tide, 
A sky beyond the sky ! 

Away with ghosts of twilight. 

With wraiths and dreams of sleep ! 

Appear to me in thy light. 
Thou dawn above the deep. 



41 



MOUNTAINOUS. 

Alps upon Alps, O poet, how they flout thee, 
Whelm thee in wildness that no god can tame 

Caverns and grots above thee and about thee 

Whisper to thee my solitary name. 

May 5, 1895. 

The words in italics came in sleep. 



A WISH. 

A life by the sea and a life at thy side, 
And together in death to go out with the tide. 
1892. 



FINIS. 



APPRECIATIONS 



The late JOHN H. DILLINGHAM, 
Editor of THE FRIEND. 

140 N. 16th St., 
Philadelphia : 
12 Mo. 11, 1906. 
My dear friend, 

Albert J. Edmunds : 
I sat up late last night reading several of the poems 
in thy "Fairmount Park" collection, finding not one of 
them would grow old under successive readings, one of 
which would be a revealer of its ever new successor, so 
full of suggestion are they all : also of deep feeling, and 
exploration in much learning. 

******* 

Thou art to be congratulated on thy publication, 
and there are many that can give that appreciation 
above the multitudes of pearl-tramplers. 

Sincerely thy friend, 

John H. Dillingham. 

The late ALBERT H. SMYTH, 
Editor of the Works of Franklin. 

I have enjoyed the poems for their own still sym- 
pathy and beauty. They have a love of the deep reme- 
dial and redemptive forces of nature that is seldom 
found in our contemporary verse. 

F. W. FRANKLAND, of New Zealand. 

The poems .... are very beautiful. I was 
especially impressed with the one entitled "The Sacred 
Books of the East." It is on the whole the most beau- 
tiful description of the great pageant of religious his- 
tory I have ever seen. The references to Zoroaster's 
religion and to "Gotamo the Sakya Lion" are, to my 
mind, especially touching. 

[Mr. Frankland proves the sincerity of his words 
by reprinting the admired poem and circulating it as a 
leaflet among thoughtful people.] 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 

Studies in the Christian Religion. Complete 
series, 1915-1920, large quarto, $2.00. 

The Ghost-Story attested by Peter and 
Paul that inspired the Christian Religion. (Se- 
lect leaves from the above, $1.00.) 

Buddhist and Christian Gospels. With 
Notes from the Chinese by Anesaki, 1908-1914, 
2 vols., 8vo, $5.00. 

Philadelphia 

INNES & SONS 

129 North Twelfth Street 



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